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Tuesday, 22 May 2012

Adam Foulkes & Alan Smith "This Way Up" (2009)

This Way Up, although nominated, failed to win the Oscar in 2009. It was unlucky. Adam Foulkes and Alan Smith make a lively romp as their hapless pair of undertakers set out to deliver the coffin and corpse of a little old lady in red slippers. Their task is not made any easier by malevolent circumstance, the journey to the grave jinxed; indeed, everything two resourceful animators can devise in the way of obstructions and near escapes. The two men are stoic throughout, in that stiff upper lip British tradition, not speaking and yet, in extremity, risking all for their client and each other, and in consequence supporting the highly exaggerated comic. Technically and artistically the film is supremely confident, the dark humour, and funereal dress being more than matched in the carnival atmosphere towards the close. There is also one of the most imaginative depictions of death's grand entrance, the boys struggling to stay topside. Adam and Alan are mainstays of Nexus.